The apparent liberty of this personal being to whom we are so deeply attached hide the pitiful subjection to thousands of suggestions, impulses and forces that we have believed extraneous to our small person.

Our ego who boasts of being free is every instant the slave, the plaything

and the puppet of countless beings, powers and influences

from the universal Nature.

Gandhi adds that:

To deprive a man of his natural liberty…is worse than starving the body;

it is starvation of the soul, the dweller in the body.

Benjamin Franklin has a warning:

They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety

deserve neither liberty nor safety.

G.B. Shaw noted that:

Liberty means responsibility. That is why

most men dread it.

What about you?

As Clarence Darrow said,

You can only protect your liberties in this world by protecting

the other man’s freedom. You can only be free

if I am free.

Why?

Auberon Herbert makes an essential point:

To live in a state of liberty is not to live apart from law.

It is, on the contrary, to live under the highest law,

the only law that can really profit a man, the law which is consciously

Liberty is the liberty from the idea that we have of ourselves, because

the only slavery is the idea of a “me”.

Which idea do you have of yourself?

How will you become free of the idea of “me”?

Sri Aurobindo has the last word and sums it all up thus:

The apparent liberty of this personal being to whom we are

so deeply attached hide the pitiful subjection

to thousands of suggestions,

impulses and forces that we have believed extraneous to our small person.

Our ego who boasts of being free is every instant the slave, the plaything

and the puppet of countless beings, powers and influences

from the universal Nature.

Practice:

1) Consider this passage of Montesquieu

There is no word that has admitted of more various significations,

and made more different impressions on human minds,

than that of Liberty.

Some have taken it for a facility of deposing a person on whom they had conferred a tyrannical authority; others for the power of choosing a person whom they are obliged to obey; others for the right of bearing arms, and of being thereby enabled to use violence, others in fine for the privilege of being governed by a native of their own country or by their own laws.Some have annexed this name to one form of government, in exclusion of others…

Let a man stand free from will, imagination, and belief – this is the sign of liberty,

the path that leads to Brahman, the opening of the door, and through it

he will go to the other shore of the darkness.

All desires are there fulfilled.

However, this applies more to inner freedom than liberty.

3) Meditate on these words of Sri Aurobindo:

The apparent liberty of this personal being to whom we are so deeply attached hide the pitiful subjection to thousands of suggestions, impulses and forces that we have believed extraneous to our small person.

Our ego who boasts of being free is every instant the slave, the plaything